


Lady Drury's Closet

by Amberdreams



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Dean is 45, Future Fic, Gen, Mystery, Sam is 41, a different kind of monster, aging sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 13:09:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16326854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberdreams/pseuds/Amberdreams
Summary: Set in a future where both the Darkness and Lucifer are no longer an issue. Jody calls in Dean and Sam to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a man from a locked room. Things get complicated when both Claire and the room itself vanishes from the missing man's house. The boys investigation is dead in the water until several months later, when Sam finds a report of a missing child who's disappeared in similar circumstances, right on their doorstep in Lebanon.





	Lady Drury's Closet

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason I forgot to post this one on AO3 back in 2016, so here it is!

**Art** by entirely-the-wrong-sort and fangirl_litra. Many thanks for choosing my story! Art links - fangirl_litra's cool colouring and animation of one of entirely's line arts is [HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6823960). Other links are coming soon.  
**Acknowledgements** \- a special mention to my beta, [](http://gatorgurl94.livejournal.com/profile)[gatorgurl94](http://gatorgurl94.livejournal.com/). You made this a much better story!

 

There was a glint of light on a dirty windowpane, the early winter sun made extra watery by the pouring rain. There must be a rainbow somewhere but Dean couldn’t see it, and the sunlight was doing nothing to alleviate the air of gloom that hung over the brownstone mansion as the Impala drew up at the steps to its imposing entrance.

“One haunted house, coming up,” Dean said as he hauled on the handbrake with an effort. Damn. Baby was getting stiff, she was overdue a complete overhaul – and now Dean was feeling guilty for not noticing this fact before they’d set off from the Bunker the previous morning. The oil change and quick fixes he’d done before the long drive felt like giving her a makeover instead of the proper health check she deserved.

“The style of the house looks like Old Queen’s in New Brunswick,” Sam was saying. Dean tried not to listen. He’d been driving for the last twenty-four hours, and was too tired to see straight, let alone feign interest in the finer points of nineteenth century American architecture.  He sensed a lecture coming whether he liked it or not. When Sam turned forty he’d decided to start an online course in the History of Urban Architecture, and since then Sam couldn’t resist taking every opportunity to share what he considered golden nuggets of information with Dean. In Dean’s view the only nuggets Sam could offer that would be of interest were covered in breadcrumbs and had chicken inside, but sadly, he feared that any distraction tactic that focused on Colonel Sanders wouldn’t save him now. He was right. “The style is definitely early eighteen hundreds,” Sam blithely continued, ignoring Dean’s pained expression, “and that stone is ashlar brownstone, so I bet it was quarried in the hills near New Brunswick, not far from here.”

Dean refrained from singing _la la la_ to drown Sam out, but it was a close thing. He tried switching topics instead.

“So if this Marvin guy vanished from inside a locked room, what do you think we’ve got here? Maybe it’s not a ghost at all,” Dean’s eyes widened with sudden delight. “Maybe we’ve got ourselves our very own Eugene Victor Tooms!”

Sam rolled his eyes. “I should never have got you that X Files box set.”

Baby’s doors creaked in unison as they got out, wet gravel crunching underfoot. The air smelled of rain and the ice that was never far away in a New Jersey winter. Shivering, Dean turned up the collar of his overcoat and wished they hadn’t needed to use their FBI covers. It was too damned cold for thin monkey-suits and a single layer of wool. Maybe he should succumb to the demands of his aging body and invest in some thermal underwear.

“Still, needs must when the devil no longer drives, hey, Sammy?” he said, always relishing a chance to celebrate Lucifer’s absence from the world, while Sam looked at him with one eyebrow raised. 

“You know you didn’t actually say the first part of that thought out loud, right, Dean?”

“So how’d you know what I meant then, genius?”

“I can read you like a book, man, you should know that by now. You were thinking it’s too cold for this get up, weren’t you,” Sam said, a smug smile on his face as he gestured at his own thick woollen coat. Dean frowned and thought about denying it; realised it would be futile and shrugged instead.

“Come on man, let’s knock on the damn door and get this over with so I can find us a nice warm motel and get some sleep.”

Dean suppressed a full body shiver. Sam with his furnace-body might not be bothered about the icy trickles of water that had started to slither down between collar and neck, but at forty-five years old Dean could do without it. And fuck anyone who dared to tell him he was getting soft in his old age.

The house was empty. Sam knocked but they both knew immediately there was no one home from the hollow sound that echoed round behind the closed door. There was something unmistakable about the quiet of an empty home that the Winchesters knew intimately. Dean didn’t speak or even have to look at Sam before Sam’s lock picks were being deployed. Ten seconds later, they were inside.

Dean whistled low under his breath as he looked around the spacious hall. Polished tiles led to a wide sweep of staircase, the thick carved banisters and wood panelled walls scenting the air with the smell of beeswax and money.

“So, what’s first, prof?” Dean asked, ignoring the massive eye roll Sam gave him. Since Sam started studying again, Dean couldn’t resist adding to his repertoire of nicknames. It was nice to have something new to tease his little brother about.  “EMF the whole joint while we’ve got the place to ourselves?”

Sam nodded, looking thoughtful. Which, you know, when he wasn’t pulling a bitch face, was Sam’s default setting. Sam had managed to intensify that professorial look by adding glasses – vari-focals, no less. Though as he usually took his glasses off to read, Dean couldn’t see why he’d gone to all the extra expense. It seemed that old age liked to hit the eyesight both ways, short and long. Clearly too much studying and researching was the culprit, and Dean was more than happy to rib Sam about it, while keeping very quiet about his own sneaky visit to a Lasik clinic two years back, when he’d told Sam he was catching up with an old hunter friend in Ohio.

“Jody said the room where Marvin disappeared was upstairs, but we might as well scan the whole building.” Sam said, pushing his glasses back up his nose after wiping off the rain with a soft cloth he kept in an inside pocket. “She sent her apologies for not being able to join us by the way, but this New Hope sheriff election business is taking up all her time. Plus, she’d get slammed if she was caught messing around outside her jurisdiction.”

Dean had already got the EMF meter out and switched on. “I still can’t get used to Jody and the girls being in Pennsylvania instead of Sioux Falls,” he said as he waved the device around the entrance hall. Sam switched on his own meter – one of the benefits of having a home base and nothing much else to do with their downtime was Sam learning some electronics and building his own meter, while Dean invested in a bunch of cookbooks. “Don’t seem right her not being in South Dakota any more,” Dean added.

Sam nodded in acknowledgement of Dean’s unspoken complaint – that Jody moving east to be close to Alex and Claire meant the Winchesters had no excuse to visit Sioux Falls any more. For Dean it was cutting another tie with their past; added to which, it felt somehow disloyal to Bobby. Sam seemed to understand, but Sam had never felt the same attachment to places that Dean did. Dean had seen the way Sam added small mementoes to the box under his bed as and when the occasion arose. Sam could carry the past with him wherever he went, and that was enough. Plus, Sam was something of a proud surrogate dad to Alex. When Jody had told them Alex had decided to study law when she completed her degree, and that she’d gotten a place at Rutgers Law School, Sam couldn’t have been prouder if she’d been his own kid. Much to Dean’s amusement; though it was also kind of adorable to see Sam so invested.

Dean’s musings had carried him up the wide staircase and partway down a thickly carpeted hallway before he noticed his little brother wasn’t with him. Sam must have decided to sweep the downstairs first; in fact, Dean vaguely remembered Sam saying something about splitting up. Right. Made sense. The quicker they got this survey for anything paranormal out of the way, the quicker Dean could sleep. He closed his eyes for a second, visualising that motel bed that was waiting for him…mmm, yeah, big fluffy pillows and crisp white sheets…damn if that didn’t get him more roused than almost anything else these days, with the exception of pie. 

He was jolted out of his reverie by a piercing squeal from his EMF meter. His eyes flew open and he examined the door to the room that had got his EMF all excited. It didn’t look any different from any of the other panelled wooden doors he’d passed so far. The sun was higher now, shining through the large arched window at the end of the passageway. The light brought out the golden depths of the wood grain and set the brass handle gleaming and really, this whole house was way classier than most gigs they’d had.

He tried the door – it was locked. Placing the meter and the gun on the floor, he worked at the lock with an alacrity Sam would have been proud of. Re-armed, with the shotgun cocked and ready, Dean opened the door and stepped inside, wincing a little as the EMF meter’s scream intensified. Whatever was going on, this room had to be the centre of it.

The window was covered with a cream coloured blind that muted the light to a uniform dimness, but that wasn’t what caught Dean’s attention. The room’s walls were covered in paintings. He turned slowly, taking it all in. It was more of a closet that a room, no more than seven feet square. Each wall was divided into panels, some with four paintings, some with five, all filled with intricately detailed scenes. Dean switched off the EMF meter. It wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, and the noise was making his teeth ache. He slipped it into his pocket but kept the salt gun ready even though, apart from the EMF reaction, there were no signs of anything supernatural. The temperature was normal and the room smelt of nothing but linseed oil and dust.

Dean started checking out each panel with a growing curiosity that was mixed with a healthy dollop of puzzlement. The quality of the painting was uniform; each panel looked to have been the work of the same artist; not that Dean was an expert, of course. His spare hand was digging for his cell to summon his resident art historian – Sam – when it went off, the buzz making his fingers tingle.

The display said Jody.

Sam walked through the door as Dean answered, watched as Dean’s jaw clenched.

“Hey, Jody. Yeah, we’re at the house, arrived about an hour ago. No, we haven’t seen Claire. Yeah, don’t worry, you got it; we’ll tear this place apart if we have to. Hang tight.”

Dean put the phone in his jacket, his expression grim. “Jody says Claire didn’t want to wait for us to arrive, she insisted on coming here to investigate on her own, two, maybe three hours ago. She’s tried Claire’s cell, got nothing.”

Sam was already punching in Claire’s number on his cell. Both of them stood in the dead silence of the empty house, listening. The only ringing to be heard was from the muffled speaker on Sam’s cell. By unspoken assent, they walked along the corridor checking each of the rooms in turn.

“Goddammit, Sammy, I thought she’d given up hunting for that research job in that fancy religious library in Princeton. What the fuck was she doing here?”

Sam shook his head, waiting out the ringing until it was clear no answer was forthcoming. “No voicemail, either,” Sam observed as he put his cell away. “That’s kind of weird. Her service should either put calls through to voice mail or give an unavailable message. It’s like the number doesn’t exist.”

They had made their way back to the closet room Dean had discovered earlier, and Sam looked around it for the first time. He ran a long finger over the shiny varnish that covered a painted tree, his angular face deep in thought. Dean waited, hoping Sam would see something he’d missed, because now there were two people missing and one of them was family. Suddenly the stakes were too high, but there could be no folding, not with Claire’s life on the line.

“This is the room, isn’t it? The locked room Marvin Leigh disappeared from,” Dean said, when the silence became unbearable. Sam nodded but didn’t stop his minute examination of the painted panels, by touch and sight both, his hand following his gaze as if his fingertips could tell him something his vision couldn’t. Dean didn’t question it; Sam was the perceptive one after all. So Dean was surprised when it was him not Sam who spotted it – a patch that looked shinier, fresher than the rest. It was high up, in the panel opposite the window. The picture showed a landscape like the others, a peculiarly random mix of flowers and trees and scenes. This one showed a well with a bucket suspended in mid air, next to which stood a figure who looked remarkably like…

“No. It can’t be.” Dean reached up, gently placed a fingertip on the figure’s dark jacket, careful not to touch the flesh tones or the long golden hair. Sure enough, the paint was still wet. He felt Sam’s warmth bleeding through their layers as Sam came up behind him, but all that radiant heat couldn’t shake the chill that was running through his bones. Wide and frightened, Claire’s blue eyes stared out of the picture, her cell phone clutched tight in her left hand, sawn off shotgun in her right – everything rendered with deft brushstrokes in miniature.

“What the fuck? Is that really Claire?” Dean looked at the smear of paint on his finger with the kind of blank, helpless horror he hadn’t felt for more than five years; not since he’d watched the angels leave, taking Castiel with them, like the freaking Elves in Lord of the Rings sailing into the sunset. Except this Frodo had stayed behind with his Sam.

Sam sighed, his breath huffing moist against Dean’s neck, gross and comforting. “I think so.” 

“What is it then? Are we looking for a witch, a curse? Some sort of crazy-ass painter ghost or what?”

“I don’t know, Dean. I’ve never heard of anything like this before. I need to do some research.”

Dean thought about Princeton and its famous theological library, now missing a research assistant. His heart sank even further.

“Aw fuck, Sammy. How are we going to tell Jody?” He turned and looked at Sam. 

“More to the point,” Sam said, his mouth set in a grim line, “ _what_ are we going to tell her?”

** 0x0x0x0 **

Jody didn’t blame them. Dean almost wished she would; Alex had no problem laying into the Winchesters for losing her sister and to be honest, Dean found the shouting was easier to deal with. Dean was the one holding the emotional fort, because the moment they returned to Pennsylvania, Sam announced his intent to visit the Theological Seminary in Princeton.

“Aren’t you a bit old to start studying for the priesthood?” Dean cracked, but his attempted humour fell flatter than sliced American cheese. Sam rolled his eyes, Alex glared and Jody just blinked and carried on staring out the window as if she was waiting for Claire’s car to come rolling up the drive.

Fortunately, about two minutes after Sam departed for Princeton, Jody snapped back into something resembling her old self. She insisted on seeing the painting for herself; she didn’t want to wait for whatever Sam might turn up in his precious old books, which was fair enough. They dropped Alex back at her college before the two of them returned to Marvin Leigh’s house to see what could be done for Claire.

The answer was nothing at all.

Dean paced the hallway, trailing Jody behind him from room to room, increasingly frantic – because Claire’s painting had gone. In fact what was worse, the whole room had disappeared. There was no sign it had ever existed, which was impossible.

“What do you mean, the room’s gone, Dean?” Sam hissed down the phone. Must be inside the library. Dean shrugged, even though Sam couldn’t see it.

“Just what I said, Sammy. The whole room’s fuckin’ disappeared. I’ve been through the whole damn house, upstairs and downstairs, and it’s nowhere. There isn’t even a closet in here small enough to have been that panelled room, you know?”

Sam’s huff of breath showed that he didn’t know, but Dean knew his brother. Sam would leave no stone unturned, no book unread in pursuit of the answer.

The drive back to Jody’s new place was a silent one after Jody cut off Dean’s miserable attempts at comfort. It reminded him of another journey with a formidable woman next to him and a younger blonde one in the back seat, and the memory of Ellen and Jo was enough to choke off any idea of filling the uneasy quiet with music.

After a few weeks based in New Hope, Sam had found nothing in the Princeton library and Dean was going stir crazy. Their motel was nice enough. It even had a pool, which brought back memories of one rare lazy summer they’d spent in North Carolina when Dad was laid up with a broken leg. Dean had been fifteen, Sam a chubby eleven year old who wanted to do nothing but spend his days at the local Civil War Museum, but Dean had wrestled the kid into swimming trunks, and after his first dunking, Dean had been hard pressed to get Sam out of the algae-filled water. Somehow wallowing in the Rode Inn’s clean, chlorine scented pool with only his memories for company didn’t have the same appeal.

On Jody’s suggestion, Dean drove up the 202 and spent a few hours fishing in Aquetong Lake, which was a mistake. He spent the whole time sitting on the wooden pier trying not to think about Castiel and failing miserably. He returned to the motel that evening so morose and quiet, Sam wanted to take his temperature, worried he was coming down with something. Dean didn’t like to say it was only a terminal case of too many memories crowding round in his head. How could he tell Sam he missed not only their many dear departed, but a kid brother that hadn’t existed for more than thirty years? It wouldn’t go over well.  
Dean tried not to cheer when Sam finally gave up and decided they would be better off doing their researching back in the Bunker.

** 0x0x0x0 **

_ Six months later. Lebanon, Kansas. _

“Dean!”

Sam had to yell to be heard over the digitally re-mastered Led Zeppelin III blasting out from the pocket music player perched precariously on the edge of a shelf. It was far too close to the suds-filled bucket Dean was using to wash the Impala, especially considering said music player belonged to Sam. He’d been wondering where the damn thing had gone. Sam had a moment’s nostalgia for the good old days when Dean had refused to go anywhere near anything electronic that hadn’t been around in the 1980s. He grabbed the player and switched it off. Undeterred, Dean carried on belting out Immigrant Song in a voice that was pure gravel. Seriously, his brother’s ability to sing had not improved over the years and was as unlike Robert Plant’s haunting vocal as it was possible to be. Dean’s was the audio-equivalent of raw methylated spirits. It should have been excruciating but Sam loved it. Dean only sang like this when he was content.

Sam’s brow furrowed at that thought. His news was likely to burst that happiness-bubble for his brother, but it couldn’t be helped. Sam waited until Dean finished wailing _ah ah ah_ for the last time and stopped wiggling his ass where he was bent over Baby’s hood, before delivering his message.

“There’s been another disappearance,” Sam said. He didn’t need to explain what kind of disappearance. For both of them, there had only been one type of missing person report that interested them since New Jersey. Dean dropped the washcloth into the bucket, oblivious to the water sloshing over the sides, soaking his feet.

“Where?” Dean wiped his wet palms on his worn sweat pants, tension knotting the tendons in the backs of his hands.

“Here, in Lebanon,” Sam said.

Ten minutes later, Dean was dressed and ready to go. Less than thirty minutes later the Impala pulled up outside an unremarkable white-painted clapboard house on Walnut Street, right in the centre of town. Dean may have broken a few traffic laws on the way, but Sam wasn’t going to call him on it today.

“Here? Really?”  Dean stared out of the side window, a look of disbelief on his face.

Sam shared Dean’s incredulity. The closet room that Marvin Leigh had vanished from had been small, but Leigh’s house had history, elegance. This place was utterly ordinary. Single story, white painted wood with green trim, three black walnut trees outside the front, kids toys scattered on the grass by the low porch.

“You know we’ve no more information about what could be happening here than we did before, Dean. All our research has thrown up bupkis. We’re going in blind.”

“I know, Sammy. But this is about a missing kid this time, as well as Claire. We can’t just sit around with our thumbs up our asses waiting for some sort of revelation.”

“Yeah, I hear you.” And Sam did. He shared Dean’s frustration at the lack of information anywhere. It was as if the phenomenon of people going missing from inside locked rooms didn’t exist outside of magic tricks. All the information Sam had been able to find centred round murder mysteries, all of which had twisty, clever explanations of a non-supernatural nature. This was the first chance they’d had to get closer to solving their own private mystery and get Jody’s adopted daughter back. It totally sucked that this opportunity had only come with the loss of another child; ten year old Joel Hart.

Even after all this time and some things never changed. Like the look Dean always got when any case of theirs involved a monster harming a child. Sam understood so many aspects of Dean, yet that one always teetered on the edge of incomprehensible, because Sam knew Dean’s utterly pure protective instincts when it came to kids were rooted in Dean’s unshakeable love for Sam. And that was never going to be something Sam was comfortable with, even on the occasions he might appear to take Dean’s devotion for granted.

They hadn’t discussed their approach, but Sam recognised that razor-focus and let his brother take the lead. Sam stood behind Dean when they knocked on Pearl Hart’s dark green door, trying not to loom, and didn’t question Dean’s decision to be honest with Joel’s mom about why they were there. Sometimes Dean’s instincts about people were so keen, Sam thought he’d cut himself on their sharp edges. When his big brother wasn’t busy trying to be a dick, of course. Certainly, there was no sign of Dean’s trademark cocky persona now.

“Mrs Hart. Pearl,” Dean said, all wide earnest eyes, “I’m Dean, this is my brother Sam. We want to help you find Joel. Please, hear me out,” he added hurriedly, as Pearl Hart started to shut the door. Something in his tone must have gotten to her, because she paused, listening. “Six months ago in New Jersey, we lost someone the same way you lost your boy, and we never had a chance to work out exactly what happened. We’ve been trying to get Claire back every way we can, but without seeing that room where she disappeared? Well, it’s been impossible. But if you let us see the room where Joel vanished, we might be able to work out what happened, see if this is the same thing. And maybe then we can get both of them back. Your Joel and our friend’s daughter.”

Sam saw the moment that hope overwhelmed Pearl Hart’s caution and fear, and her resistance crumbled. 

“You’d better come in,” she said, her voice rough from crying. Sam thought Pearl would be considered a pretty woman in the normal run of things, if a little skinny. Now though, grief was a patina that made her look old and worn out. Her face was drawn, her grey eyes shadowed, her blonde hair dull and unwashed. She ran thin hands over her dress in a nervous gesture as she stood in the centre of the living room like she’d run out of ideas. It was Dean who got them all sitting down so that Pearl could tell them what happened. Sam sat back looking as unthreatening as a six foot five guy could, while Dean leaned forward, elbows on his knees, pinning her in place with his sincerity.

“Tell us everything, Pearl. You can tell the real story, don’t worry how it sounds. Believe me, we’ve heard and seen more weird than you can imagine.”

Pearl took a steadying breath and began.

“Joel was acting up, he’d been in a mood since he’d gotten home from school. Said he didn’t want to do his homework, didn’t want to eat his dinner, just sat in front of the TV on his cell phone, texting, gaming – I don’t know. So anyhow, I’d had enough, I snapped. Grabbed his cell, sent him to his room. I told him not to bother coming out again until he’d done his math problems and was ready to apologise.”

Pearl paused to swallow down her tears, one hand winding a strand of lank, blonde hair round and round until her fingers were all tangled up. Dean reached out and gently took her free hand, and the human touch seemed to give her the courage to continue.

“He stormed out in a sulk, and I heard his bedroom door slam, then everything was quiet for a long time. I was baby-sitting for my friend, so I was busy with little Masie, getting her fed and settled, then washing the pots and all, and I didn’t think to check on Joel until well after sundown. That’s when I found his door was locked, which should have been impossible, because none of the doors inside this house have locks, you know? I banged on the door, and shouted, but Joel didn’t answer. I even went outside to look through the window, but there was a blind down, so I couldn’t see in.

“I told the police, that blind doesn’t belong to the room, Joel has curtains, special ones I made him when he was seven and crazy about Spiderman. But then _nothing_ about that room is right. All the furniture gone and those creepy paintings are where the wallpaper should be. Then I came back inside and tried the door again – nothing, it wouldn’t budge. I didn’t know what to do. I was going to go call Alan, my neighbour, but I thought I’d try one last time and the handle turned easy as anything. I couldn’t believe it. But when I walked in, Joel wasn’t inside and none of his things were there either, not even his bed. It was like I’d walked into a stranger’s house. So yeah, the police are looking for Joel, but they’ve written me off as crazy.”

Sam exchanged a glance with Dean. So far, this scenario sounded similar enough to match Marvin Leigh and Claire. Dean patted Pearl’s hand and stood up. “We don’t think you’re crazy, Pearl. Come on and show us this room.”

Sam grimaced. His back and right leg twinged as he stood, one of several painful legacies from occupational injuries. What? Hunting is an occupation, albeit an unorthodox one. He felt it on days like today, when he didn’t have the opportunity to dose himself up before leaving the bunker.He usually self medicated with home grown cannabis but obviously he couldn’t light up a joint here. Sam was continually irritated by the fact that Dean didn’t seem to suffer from similar problems, especially as Dean was older and led a far less healthy lifestyle. Life really wasn’t fair.

Sam’s wallow in self pity was brief, all thoughts of his bodily aches and pains banished when he peered over Pearl’s head through the open door into the room that should have been the ten year old boy’s bedroom. Dean was already inside; he’d gone straight to the ‘creepy painting’ where Claire should be, and Sam could see from the clenching of Dean’s fists that he’d found her. Dean’s face was set when he beckoned Sam inside.

“Look,” Dean said, pointing to a small figure between the depiction of Claire and a flowering bush. Sam’s lips pressed together. He hesitated for a second then decided this was necessary. He called Pearl over.

“Is this Joel?” 

The question was redundant in the face of her reaction. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth as she gasped. “How…how did this get there? Nobody’s been into the house since the police were here.”

Dean touched the paint very carefully with one finger. “Dry,” he said. “This must have been done when Joel disappeared. There’s been nearly forty-eight hours for the paint to dry. This,” he showed Pearl the other figure, “this is Claire, our friend’s daughter.” Dean moved across the room scanning each panel until he came to one that featured a dejected-looking man in a suit sitting under a willow tree. “And this, if I’m not mistaken, is Marvin Leigh.”

Sam took his glasses off to take a closer look, then nodded. Whoever or whatever was creating these oil paintings was making uncannily accurate likenesses of the victims. Given that each panel had at least one person depicted, that was a disturbing number of potential missing people. He pulled out his cell, opened the blind to let the light stream in, and started taking photos of each panel. He wished they’d been able to do this last time, but the room had disappeared too quickly. It had really restricted the amount of information Sam had been able to glean about this strange room. Focused on his task, Sam left Dean to comfort Pearl, who was understandably upset all over again at seeing her little boy’s picture on the wall.

There were six panels; three with eight pictures in two columns, three with twelve pictures in three columns. Each panel had an inscription across the top, and most of the pictures had inscriptions too, all in Latin. Sam took close ups of each. He’d take a good look at them all once he’d gotten the photos loaded up onto his laptop. The bottom picture in each set of four was of one or more plants – herbs and wildflowers – and none of these contained any people or writing, though Sam wasn’t dismissing their significance. The herbs might have a purpose for witchcraft, or some other meaning.

By the time Sam had finished, Pearl had gone back into the living room and Dean was propping up the door frame, legs crossed at the ankles, the picture of nonchalance to the untutored eye. Sam wasn’t fooled. Dean raised one eyebrow. “You done, Annie Leibovitz?”

Sam ignored the dig at his photography skills (and his gender) in favour of checking that the pictures on his cell phone matched the room then nodded. “These inscriptions are weird, man,” he said. “Some of them don’t even seem to be complete. Like this one,” he pointed to the top of the first panel to the right of the door, which happened to be the one in which Claire and Joel appeared. FRUSTRA NISI DOMINUS. “It’s useless unless the Lord,” he translated.

“Unless the Lord what?” Dean asked.

“Exactly!” Sam said, putting his phone into his pocket. “I’m going to have to see if these phrases are part of some larger document. Maybe someone has just copied extracts instead of the whole thing.” 

Dean grinned. “Nice to see you getting your geek on again, professor.” Sam gave Dean the finger over his shoulder as he walked down the narrow hall back to the living room where Pearl was sitting, looking as lost as her child. She looked up as he entered, and he almost winced at the hopeful expression on her face.

“Do you think you and your friend will be able to help?”

“Dean’s my brother; and I don’t know yet, but I hope so. We’ve solved some pretty strange cases in the past, haven’t we, Dean?” Sam turned his head and that was when he realised Dean wasn’t behind him. He spun round, his stomach sinking with sudden dreadful anticipation. “Dean?”

At the end of the short hallway, Sam saw the door to the room swing shut, heard a click like a bolt snapping into place and though he ran the few strides it took to reach the smooth dark wood, he already knew he’d be too late.

 

** 0x0x0x0 **

Dean meant to follow Sam straight out of there, but he couldn’t just walk away, knowing Claire was stuck there somehow, and not knowing if she could see or hear anything – little ten year old Joel Hart too, for that matter. He lingered by their panel for a moment, glad that the picture the two kids were placed in wasn’t one of the really weird ones – like that one over there with the flying orange eagle that was carrying an elephant in its talons, or the creepy old man with donkey ears and ants crawling over him. What was this artist smoking, anyhow, to come up with this shit?

Shadows were gathering in the corners of the room, and when Dean glanced at the window he saw the sky outside was overcast and lowering. Before he could even form the thought, fat raindrops spattered against the windowpanes. The sudden downpour was loud, and Dean took his opportunity to speak his piece without the risk of being overheard and mocked by Sam.

“Claire, listen,” he said, “Sam’s got everything recorded now, so we should be able to crack this thing. Sorry we’re taking so long, but until the room turned up again, we had nothing to go on. But anyway, we’re going to get you both out of here; we ain’t going to lose sight of this place again. Just so you know.”

He thought he heard a noise behind him over the drumming of the rain and turned to go, fully expecting to see Sam standing there grinning at Dean’s sappiness, but the room was empty. Empty, but something was different. It took him a second to realise what was wrong – the door was closed. He knew Sam would never have shut it, and he certainly hadn’t been near it. He tried the handle but it wouldn’t budge; he thumped it with his fist, then his shoulder – it didn’t so much as rattle.

He leaned his forehead against the smooth grain of the wood. Dammit, this couldn’t be happening; he couldn’t get himself trapped in here like this. He couldn’t leave Sam alone. The air pressed on him from all sides, thick with the scent of oil paint. He recognised it from New Jersey, the same mix of rancid linseed and metallic pigment he’d smelled in Marvin Leigh’s house – except this was stronger, more cloying. He tried to turn around to face whatever was coming, but he couldn’t move. His limbs were heavy, as if they were liquifying under the pressure. He coughed, trying to breathe through the steadily increasing fumes. His thoughts were fading, smoothing out with each laboured breath as he was stretched thin, brushed into layers, his tints blending, smearing into each other until Dean simply stopped. He was nothing but colour, shading and line. A coat of varnish sealed him in.

** 0x0x0x0 **

“Dean!”

Sam pushed and rattled the door handle, fighting down the panic that threatened to overwhelm him with memories of loss, each more bloody and terrifying than the last – Dick Roman exploding; the look on Dean’s face when Metatron sheathed his blade in Dean’s chest; Dean ripped apart by invisible teeth in a bland middle-American dining room. Memories were supposed to fade with age, but even that extra two hundred years in the Cage hadn’t dulled the images in Sam’s head. Pearl was saying something, but all Sam could hear was the dull roar of his own blood. A bead of sweat trickled down his face; he tasted salt and blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his lip. It was familiar and, paradoxically, calming.

Breathing deeply, Sam centred himself. He knelt and probed the brass lock with his picks, even though part of him was certain the door wouldn’t open until the room’s work was done. But he couldn’t think about what he couldn’t change, he’d been there before and that way madness lay. He wasn’t sure how much time passed before the handle finally turned under his grasp and the door swung open. Dread and relief swept over him in equal measures. As he feared, the room was empty; Dean was gone. Thankfully the panels were still there, because if they had disappeared too, Sam would have been all out of ideas.

He looked first on the square where Claire and Joel had appeared, but Dean wasn’t there. Scanning the rest of the panels Sam found his brother in the next panel along, in a square frame second from the bottom of four. This panel’s main inscription was longer than the first panel’s, though it also didn’t seem to be complete. Sam roughly translated it as _wish to be what you are, and wish for nothing_. It didn’t make much sense, but then nothing much about this case made sense. 

Dean was depicted inside a scene that showed a tree growing out of an old fashioned straw beehive. Sam crouched down to get a better view. Dean was glaring out at the viewer, his fists clenched at his sides. Sam couldn’t help wondering if the symbolism with the bees had something to do with Cain. There was an inscription inside Dean’s painting – NOCET EMPTA DOLORE VOLUPTAS. Sam frowned. He was going to have to check the Latin because it was hard to know exactly how to read this one – was it ‘ _pleasure brought by grief does injury’_ or maybe ‘ _unbridled lust causes harm’_?  Sam swallowed down his rising frustration. He didn’t even know if these inscriptions were significant or not.

Sam looked at Dean again; reduced to a six-inch high daub of oil paint. He didn’t touch, he could see the varnish was shiny wet and he didn’t want to risk smudging his brother. How ridiculous was that? 

“Pearl,” Sam said, “I’m going to remove all these panels. I have to stop this happening again to anyone else, and I need to study them closer, to find a way to bring our loved ones back. Is that okay with you?”

Sam didn’t wait for Pearl’s nervous nod to begin prizing the first panel off the wall with his boot knife. It wasn’t the ideal tool for the job, but he wasn’t risking leaving the room and having it vanish on him while he raided the Impala’s trunk for a crowbar or a chisel and hammer. Pearl stood in the doorway, keeping watch at Sam’s request. Sam figured her presence would be enough to prevent the room from taking him too, as it seemed to only steal people away when nobody else was around. He chose the panel nearest the door that didn’t contain anyone they knew, just in case something drastic happened when the connection between the panels was broken. He offered up a silent apology to the figures painted on the panel he’d picked, ironically headed with an inscription that said ‘ _I never get what I want_ ’. He had to hope that wasn’t true.

His knife found the joint between his panel and the next, and he worried the blade into the tiny gap. The edges of the wood underneath the layers of paint were soft, almost spongy with age, so it didn’t splinter; it was more like his knife was slicing it, like a mushroom. Sam worked his way down the left hand side, creating a division between ‘ _I never get what I want_ ’ and ‘ _The home in the sky has plenty of room_ ’ – whatever that meant. If it was talking about Heaven, Sam guessed that was probably true enough since the angels had vacated the building. Using his height, Sam tackled the top of the panel next, using the knife to lever the wood away from the wall. He didn’t want to break the damn thing, but he would if he had to. 

Thankfully, after only a few minutes he was able to grasp the top edge and with a loud crack he pulled the entire panel out and down. The huge cloud of brown dust that billowed up had Sam and Pearl choking, so once Sam had his breathing under control again, he risked sending Pearl for a couple of scarves for them to tie round their faces to avoid inhaling the worst of the ancient powder. The room was filled with the smell of mould and decay, but underneath was a faint flowery scent that reminded Sam of warm summer evenings, star gazing with Dean on the hood of the Impala. He tied the scarf tight, blamed the watering of his eyes on the cloudy air and carried on with his task. 

Pearl opened the window, which let the rain in but helped keep the air relatively clear, of both the choking ancient dust and the perfumes of the various herbs and flowers that were released as Sam prised each panel off the wall. He left Dean’s and the kids’ panels until last, stacking the others carefully in the middle of the room, well away from the wet patch of rain under the open window. He was on edge the whole time, waiting for some kind of retaliation that never came. Sadly, dismantling the room didn’t set its prisoners free either, but he supposed that would have been too much to ask. Nothing was ever that simple.

Deep in thought, Sam stood in front of the last two panels, which he’d leaned against the wall, separate from the rest. “So what’s your plan?” Pearl asked finally. Sam started. He’d almost forgotten she was there. It was a good question.

“We—I’ve got a research facility on the edge of town. I’m going to take these two panels there first, so I can examine them safely. Then I’ll come back for the rest, and stick them into a secure storeroom.” Warded with every sigil, hex and seal he could find.

“You’re leaving these here?” Pearl said, gesturing at the stack of panels. The expression on her thin face was hard to read. It might have been fear, or anger, or both. Whatever it was, she hadn’t flinched away from helping, or pestered him for explanations he couldn’t give, even though Sam knew questions must be eating her up from the inside out. Sam decided he liked her.

“I’ll be honest with you, Pearl,” he said. “I have no idea what I’m doing here. We’ve never dealt with anything like this before. So I’m guessing that separating the constituent parts like this will stop it either disappearing itself, or turning anyone else into a painting. But I can’t be a hundred percent sure.”

Pearl followed him to the car, even helping him wrap the two panels carefully in a couple of old blankets from her garage, to keep them from getting damaged in transit. Away from their edges, the wood was in surprisingly good condition for something that was clearly hundreds of years old, but Sam didn’t want to take any risks. 

Which reminded him.

“Don’t go near the room while I’m gone, in case I’m wrong about this. We don’t want to lose any more people to this thing.”

Pearl nodded as if she’d already thought about this, and walked back into her house without looking back. When Sam returned several hours later with a hired pickup to transport the rest of the dismantled room to the bunker, she was waiting in the hall. She was holding a tapestry holdall and in addition to her coat she wore a determined expression. “I’m coming with you,” she said, and before Sam could draw breath to protest, she played her trump card in a voice that brooked no argument. “It’s my son.”

Sam deflated – son, brother, it was the same – family was the undeniable rationale in Winchester-world. They loaded the panels into the pickup in a silence that Sam should have found awkward but instead felt familiar.

“Won’t you be missed?” he said, giving her one last chance to change her mind. She stared at him and for a brief second Sam thought he’d like to see those eyes brighten from their present colour, which was as dull as the grey wood dust they’d stirred up. Dean always said Sam was good at empathising with victims, but in reality it was the opposite. Sam was good at pasting on a convincing façade of caring because he didn’t feel their pain, not like Dean did. When Dean was at his side, Sam always kept himself protected, didn’t reach out too far because he couldn’t afford any cracks in his psyche. One tiny crack could lead to fissures and who knew what monsters might break him apart and claw loose then? 

“I’ve told the PD I’m going to stay with relatives, and they have my cell number if they need to contact me. I’m not a suspect, they just think I’m batshit crazy and that Joel’s probably run off to get away from his weirdo mom.”

“Is there nobody here, friends, neighbours, that will be wondering where you are?”

“If you’re trying to unsubtly ask about Joel’s dad, then nope, he’s out of the picture. Ran off with his secretary seven years ago, left me and Joel high and dry. Last I heard, he was in Lawrence, but I’ve no idea where he is now and don’t care. I’ll quit my job, I can get another when we’ve got Joel back.”

Okay then. Sam started the engine and drove back to the Bunker, his mind a perfect blank.

** 0x0x0x0 **

Armed with the panels themselves as well as the photographs he’d taken, Sam made some early progress. He was pretty sure he’d found the room’s origin.

“Lady Drury’s closet,” he said, tapping the laptop screen. It was the first weekend after Dean’s disappearance, over six months after Claire’s. Jody had driven over from Pennsylvania even though her campaign advisor had told her it was a bad time to be taking personal days off from her election drive. Alex had stayed home, tied up with study assignment deadlines. Sam had stood, awkward and redundant as a Christmas tree in July while Jody broke down and cried at her first sight of Claire. Now red eyed but composed, Jody leaned over his shoulder to read the web entry he’d found. Pearl pulled her chair over and scooted up on his right to do the same.  
[](http://s830.photobucket.com/user/Amberdreams1960/media/ldc-2-line.gif.html)   
Pearl read out loud. 

**_ “Lady Drury's Closet _ ** _ (also known as the **Hawstead Panels** ) was a series of painted wooden panels of early 17th-century date, now lost. They originally decorated a painted closet, about 7 feet square, adjacent to a bedroom in Hawstead Place, Suffolk. It is believed they were made for Lady Anne Bacon Drury, wife of Sir Robert Drury of Hawstead and Hardwick. They were removed to Hardwick House, Suffolk, probably by Sir Robert, before his death in 1615. When the Hardwick House contents were sold in 1924, the panels were unaccounted for. _

_ The panels contain a series of emblems of the kind associated with emblem books—images fashionable throughout Europe for private religious meditation in that age. The original sequence of the emblems is unclear, although the panels as arranged under their Latin "headings" are as originally devised. In addition to their importance for the study of emblems in general, they are significant because the Drurys were patrons of the poet and divine John Donne, who wrote his two Anniversaries following the death in 1610 of their daughter Elizabeth Drury—namely,  _ An Anatomy of the World _and_ The Second Anniversarie _or_ the Progresse of the Soule _. The epigrammatic and verbally or visually paradoxical themes of the paintings are, however, linked more directly to the themes and techniques of meditation developed in the writings and sermons of the preacher Joseph Hall, who was chaplain and spiritual advisor to Lady Drury at Hawstead.”_

The entry was short and the only picture was a thumbnail sized etching, but the paintings were definitely the same. 

“So,” Jody said hesitantly, “are these emblems some kind of spell?”

“If they are, it’s not like any kind of spell I’ve come across before,” Sam answered, tapping his fingers on the mahogany table in a staccato rhythm. He stopped abruptly when he realised it was Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. He missed Dean so fucking much; it was a constant ache in the centre of his chest. He blinked sudden tears away and squared his shoulders. “But whatever these are, we now have a lead. So who wants to research Lady Anne and who wants emblems? I’m going to check out John Donne.”

By the time Jody left again, Sam was sick of Donne and his cryptic metaphysical conceits. The only lines he could find that might have some relevance talked about a soul that had a ‘low but fatal room’ in Paradise and lived in a time of great change. Even if this was a reference to Lady Drury’s room, Sam was stumped as to how this could help him.

At first either Jody or Alex called Sam every day. As time passed, daily became every couple of days, then after six months, once a week. There was nothing new to say. Sam scanned his photos of the panels into every known database, searched for information on each obscure motto from each individual painting, tried every combination of each phrase, then even each word, in case they needed to be put in a different order to become comprehensible. But after his early success in tracking down the possible origin of the room, nothing worked, and nothing made sense, and the fixed stares of Dean and Claire and Joel felt increasingly accusing as the days gave way to weeks and months, and summer to the first chills of winter.

Sam kept the two panels in the library, the one with Dean and the one with Claire and Joel. The rest were stacked in a small storage room next to the dungeon. Sam cleared it out beforehand, and painted the walls with every warding he could find in the Men of Letters’ library. The paint itself was laced with salt, gopher dust and his own blood, for extra strength. Either the wards were working, or the separation was doing the trick, because the panels remained inert, and the ‘room’ didn’t transport itself to some new house. There were no new victims. So there was that consolation, albeit a poor one, offering no real comfort to either Sam or Pearl, or to Jody and Alex. 

Pearl surprised Sam by staying, and he surprised himself by appreciating her company.

** 0x0x0x0 **

Pearl’s presence kept Sam sane. As sane as it was possible to be when you slept in your missing brother’s bed every night, and held one-sided conversations with a painting of your brother every day. Pearl didn’t look at him funny when he crouched in front of Dean’s panel to tell Dean what research he was going to do that day – probably because she would regularly chat to Joel, and sometimes include Claire too. Maybe neither of them was entirely sane then, but there was no one there to call them on it. Jody’s election was successful and the new sheriff of New Hope, along with Alex, would come over and stay for a few days whenever they could get free from their respective duties and or studies.  All four of them refused to give up hope that Sam would find a way to bring the prisoners of the panels back home.

“Do you think they can hear us?” Pearl asked once, but Sam didn’t have an answer for her. He didn’t know enough to even guess.

Pearl was a revelation. She was the grain of sand at the centre of her namesake. She didn’t mope, or pester him with questions, or say a word of censure when Sam steadily drank his way through the last of Dean’s stash of whiskey. She even held his head up while he puked for a solid hour, and steered him to bed afterwards without once complaining about the sour stink of him. The day after his spectacular display of drunkenness, she disappeared from the bunker and Sam was certain she must have given up on him and returned home – it would have been the sensible thing to do, after all. He was gobsmacked when she returned not only with a truckload of groceries “I’m sick of carry-out,” but also, a large baggie of hash.

“Better than alcohol for the pain, Sam,” she said, frowning at the trash can full of empty bottles of beer and Jack, and Sam couldn’t disagree. He’d been using hash for a while but when he’d run out he hadn’t bothered to resupply. Smoking weed eased the arthritis in his neck and back (no doubt the legacy of years of being tossed into walls and strangled – happy days).

That evening was mellowed by a haze of weed-smoke and their first and last make out session – lazy and easy and meaningless. Sam walked Pearl back to her room like a gentleman, the sound of Dean’s incredulous laughter echoing down the tiled corridors. 

_ I can’t believe you, dude. That dope’s fuzzied your upstairs and your downstairs brains if you can’t get it up for her. _

“Fuck you, Dean,” Sam mumbled, smiling when Pearl landed a final goodnight kiss on his cheek. “We’re not all sex crazed Lotharios, you know.”

Pearl giggled and patted Sam’s ass to send him on his way. “And I’m no Fair Penitent either, so stop talking to non-ghosts and get some sleep.”

Non-ghosts. 

The hash-high freed Sam’s thoughts so they swirled around inside his head in an aromatic haze. Pearl had put some music on in her room and her warbling followed him as he wandered down the corridor towards his – no, Dean’s - room. Something about love grows where rosemary goes, which made no sense because rosemary was a plant so it couldn’t go anywhere, stuck in the ground like Dean was stuck in the painting. Come to think of it, there was rosemary painted on the bottom of Dean’s panel, which was for remembrance and Sam wouldn’t forget, couldn’t forget even if he wanted to, surrounded as they were by illusions and ghosts. 

Or rather, surrounded by non-ghostly ghosts. Pearl was right, Dean couldn’t be a ghost because he wasn’t dead (couldn’t be, Sam wouldn’t allow it), but neither was he alive. Their souls were nowhere – Dean and all the others had disappeared body and soul without a trace, apart from the paint on the panels.

They were lost in a nothingness,-an oblivion – a void. Something about the concept niggled at Sam. Then the memory struck him. All those years ago, Billie the Reaper. She’d warned him, no, more like _threatened_ him with a place that was neither Heaven, Hell or Purgatory. She’d called it the Empty. How the hell had he forgotten the reapers? People were still dying, and souls were being collected and sent on their way; where, Sam neither knew nor cared, as long as they didn’t stay behind to haunt the living. So surely, even if all the other angels had left the building, the reapers must remain.  And if reapers knew about anything, it was souls.

Sam tried witches, he tried psychics, he even, on one memorable occasion, consulted a medium. Nothing worked, no one could find even the residual traces of a soul in the paintings. Maybe summoning a reaper would finally give him a pointer, provide his compass with access to true north again. Up to now his needle had been spinning wildly, as if he had a personal magnetic field that was disrupted by the removal of Dean. As if Dean gave him direction.

Sam swayed on his feet, staring blindly at Dean’s bed. Well that was odd. He had no memory of how he’d arrived there. His slightly hysterical giggle was interrupted by a hiccup. He slapped a hand over his mouth and looked around guiltily, even though there was no one there to see him lose his shit, except the hallucination of Dean that had stayed by his side, ever faithful, when Pearl had left him. Man, maybe he’d overdone the weed, or Pearl’s supplier had a more potent blend than he was used to, because he was floating in champagne. He felt great, but a thin, dull thread of common sense wound through the golden sparkles and told him now was probably not the best time to be attempting a summoning. Especially a summoning of beings that were probably amongst the most powerful of the supernatural creatures left on earth, not to mention ones that harboured a grudge against the Winchesters. Not that there were many supernatural creatures that liked them, but still.

The hallucination of Dean prodded Sam’s ribs none too gently. Even when he wasn’t real, Dean was annoying. “Bed,” Dean said, and Sam had to agree that sounded like a great idea. “You were right about the memory foam, Dean,” Sam told his brother conversationally, as he made his unsteady way towards Dean’s bed. “It does remember you…”

** 0x0x0x0 **

Sam woke at four AM. He was lying on his back with his mouth wide open and dry as dust. He was still fully clothed and there was an A4 sheet of paper placed on his chest. He sat up, clutching the paper in his fist, and saw that he’d left Dean’s door wide open. He flushed, hoping he hadn’t been snoring too loud, even though if he remembered right, Pearl had been high as a kite herself, so had probably either slept as well as he had, or been too high to care. He looked down at the piece of paper in his hand.

Huh. It was a note he’d written to himself, presumably scrawled in the throes of revelation last night; which meant it took Sam a second to decipher his own writing. It took another moment or two to remember what he meant by the cryptic words. He’d been reading too much John Donne.

_ R KNOW SOULS _ .

Reapers. Yes. Hope flooded Sam’s empty spaces.

** 0x0x0x0 **

Sam wasted no time in getting the ingredients for the summoning ritual together, and set everything up in the Library within an hour and a half. Impressive going, even if he said so himself. The reaper summoning worked, but the encounter didn’t go as Sam expected. Firstly, not just any reaper turned up, oh no. Sam should be so lucky. Nope, of course he got Billie herself. If Sam had thought she was disapproving and hostile when he’d encountered her before, that was nothing compared to the glare she gave him at being compelled to appear by incantation. 

Things went downhill from there.

“You,” Billie said, her scorn scathing. Evidently six years wasn’t enough time for her uncomplimentary impression of the Winchesters to have faded.

Sam tried his best to explain their predicament, but Billie wasn’t Death – or rather she wasn’t the _old_ Death, as it turned out Billie was the one who’d stood up to the plate when Dean had scythed her predecessor. A fact that she’d omitted to tell Sam when they’d met up all those years ago. Billie definitely did not have a soft spot for Sam, or Dean; in fact, Sam was wondering if she had any soft spots at all. Billie was one hundred percent pure iron wrapped up in a limpid-eyed beauty. Which was a dangerous thought to be having, given that Sam wasn’t entirely confident that Billie couldn’t read his mind.

Their discussion wasn’t going well, so Sam was relieved as well as disturbed when Pearl interrupted, coming into the Library to talk to Joel before breakfast, as was her habit. The two women glanced at each other, then at Sam. Sam was kind of impressed by the way their synchronised disapproving looks focused on him.

“Who’s this?” they asked in unison.

“Pearl, this is Billie,” Sam shot Billie a pleading look that begged her not to mention to Pearl that she was also Death. “Billie, this is Pearl. She’s Joel’s mom.” Sam thought (hoped) there was a softening around Billie’s edges as she glanced from Pearl to the second painted panel.

“Joel,” Billie said, her tone thoughtful rather than hostile. “He’s the one portrayed here, right?”

Pearl was already moving, crouching down in front of Joel like she always did when greeting him. Face to face. Her hand reached out without touching the varnished surface. 

“This isn’t a portrait,” Pearl said, “This is Joel. He’s trapped here, somehow. That’s what Sam thinks, anyhow.”

“Does he indeed,” Billie observed. “Maybe I should take a closer look.”

Sam barely refrained from fist pumping the air behind Billie’s back as she joined Pearl in front of the panel. Billie’s face was grim when she straightened up and Sam quailed a little inside.

“What is it with you Winchesters and perverting the natural order?”

“Whoa, wait a minute, this wasn’t our doing,” Sam protested, taking courage from righteous indignation. “Don’t lay the blame for this on us.”

Billie turned back to the panel, hovering her hand across the wood and paint. 

“The people here are neither alive nor dead,” she mused, her voice quiet as if she was talking to herself, “Yet they are still present, somehow, both body and soul.”

It felt strange to celebrate confirmation that Dean was trapped in a magical painting, but Sam was so relieved to know his suspicions were correct, he couldn’t help it. It meant Dean and the others were alive, and while they still had life there was hope, regardless of the form that life took. It was good, albeit bittersweet, to know he hadn’t been working so hard for nothing, although this confirmation brought him no closer to freeing his brother.

“Body and soul?” Pearl asked, her voice full of the hope Sam was feeling. He watched Billie’s compassionate reaction to the worn-out young mother and was glad all over again that Pearl had decided to stay in the bunker. This new version of Death might not have shown any sympathy with the plight of the Winchesters but she was definitely reacting to Pearl’s distress with a stern kind of warmth that suddenly reminded Sam of Missouri Moseley. He stepped back and let Pearl ask all the questions, figuring if he stayed quiet Billie might be willing to give them more Information. He didn’t want her remembering how pissed she was with his family.

When Billie told Pearl she couldn’t free the trapped souls, Sam heard regret in her voice. He was taken by surprise when Billie turned and spoke to him; he’d thought she’d forgotten he was still there, even though he’d been looming in the background, awkward as a geeky teenager too afraid to ask the popular cheerleader for a date.

“I can see why you called for a reaper, Winchester. You get a pass this time. But no angel could help with this,” she waved a slim hand at the two panels, propped up side by side. “I’ve lived a long time and taken on the mantle of a creature older than time itself, and I can’t help you either.” Sam opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off with a gesture. “I’m going to give you two pieces of advice for free though, so listen carefully.

“First – it’s clear you two aren’t conservation experts. That wood’s drying out in this atmosphere,” Billie pointed to Dean’s panel as she spoke, “See here? The panel’s splitting now it’s exposed. You need to treat the wood and maybe oil the painted side too, while you’re about it.”

Sam leaned in closer, taking his glasses off as he peered where Billie was pointing. Shit. She was right, the panel was cracking – and not only that, but two of the hairline splits in the grain were running right through Dean’s left leg and arm. Given that Billie had confirmed Dean’s body was somehow still physically present, what did this mean for his brother? Before Sam could panic any further, Billie continued. 

“Second – I haven’t seen anything like this before, but I’m thinking what you need here isn’t witch or angel or demon magic. What you need is an artist.”

Billie straightened up, a certain finality in her movements that told Sam that this was all Death was willing to offer him. He was grateful, he really was, even if he had no idea what Billie meant about this whole artist thing. He didn’t move a muscle or say a word – he wasn’t Dean to challenge powerful beings every chance he got – so he was taken by surprise when Billie spun around and poked his chest with emphasis.

“I’m not patient, Sam Winchester. You get a pass this once, for Pearl’s sake, but if I catch you distracting any of my reapers in future, you know what awaits you,” she paused, dark eyes suddenly fathomless and cold as the Emptiness she had promised them at their last encounter. Sam shivered and closed his eyes. “And, Sam, don’t _ever_ summon me again.”

Pearl gasped and Sam knew Billie was gone. He kept his eyes closed, his mind an empty desert. He didn’t know what to do. Dean’s body and soul were trapped by a magic even Death didn’t understand and Sam couldn’t think of a single action he hadn’t already taken that could fix this. The bunker air was oppressive, heavy with Sam’s inadequacy, stinking of impending failure. He could feel the weight of Pearl’s unspoken expectation sitting on his shoulders like gravity and he couldn’t face it.

“I’m going for a run,” he said, brushing past Pearl, who wasn’t having any of it. Though she was half his size and weighed less than one of Sam’s legs, she stood her ground and Sam felt like he’d walked into an iron post.

“Wait just a goddamned minute. Who was that woman? And what did she mean about the panels splitting? What does that mean for Joel?”

Sam’s eyes widened. How could he have forgotten that? The cracks in Dean’s panel, the wood drying out now it was no longer protected by a wall or sealed together with its companion pieces. The other panels would be suffering the same problem – but the good news was, this was something Sam could do something about.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. We need to treat the panels right away, stop the damage. Come on, I know there’s some oil we can use until I can check the web for the right conservation treatments.”

He explained Billie to Pearl as briefly as he could while they worked on the two panels. Pearl took it in stride that they’d had a visit from Death. “I kinda liked her,” was her only comment, and Sam couldn’t help thinking how much Dean would appreciate this unflappable woman. After he’d tested her with every possible test, of course, as Dean would be adamant that nobody should be this calm and collected in the face of this amount of Weird. Sam thought it was strange, how well Pearl had fitted into this life, though he didn’t spend much time on the thought. Pearl was too well camouflaged, somehow. Almost like she belonged there, along with the light fittings or the symbols embedded into the floor or the scent of old book bindings in the library; except Pearl smelled nicer, like jasmine, or maybe honeysuckle.

The old dry wood drank up all the linseed oil Sam could find; it was like pouring water on thirsty desert sand. The oil sank into the friable grey surface and disappeared without a trace. Clearly something more was needed to rescue the panels, so Sam took the Impala to the nearest hardware store to get both advice and supplies, leaving Pearl to use the last of their oil on a few more coats. Sam was standing in the middle of the boat building supplies (and who in their right mind builds a boat in the centre of the USA? This is Kansas, for crying out loud.) trying to decide between a saturant wood-seal or heavy-duty boat varnish as a possible solution, when the idea struck him.

Billie had said they needed an artist, and that the bodies and souls of the stolen people were still in the paintings. What if Sam had an artist paint another, identical portrait of Dean, introduced the two paintings into the same space and summoned Dean’s soul. Was there some way Sam could capture the soul in transit? Of course, it didn’t address the physical issue – basically what happened if the body didn’t accompany the soul, or what would happen if the soul didn’t go from one painting to another but was caught bodiless in between. Because then he still wouldn’t have gotten Dean back. But here must be a way of making this work. Sam didn’t think Billie was the sort of person (if you could call Death a person) who would try to screw him over – not like Lucifer, or Crowley. Surely she wouldn’t have mentioned this whole artist idea if she didn’t believe there was something in it.

Sam grabbed two large bottles of Endeavour Oil and a tin of boat varnish just in case, and hurried through the checkout. He wanted to get back to the bunker and start this new line of research as quickly as possible.

For all Sam’s urgency, it was over two weeks before he found anything useful. He’d been reading Leonardo Da Vinci’s treatise on painting in the hopes of finding either inspiration or a hint that might point him to a more esoteric source. Leonardo’s original notebooks had been gathered together by Francesco Melzi in the 1540s, but then disappeared for over a hundred years, not to be published until the early 1800s – which was plenty of time to conveniently lose any parts that strayed from orthodoxy. Sure enough, when Sam followed a trail from the Vatican Library into the Men of Letter’s archives, he discovered some missing pages, handwritten by Leonardo himself. Any other time, Sam would have been beyond excited by this discovery, but now his immediate concern was how he was going to decipher the Renaissance Italian when he couldn’t even read the tiny spikes, loops and curlicues that formed the great man’s handwriting. Fortunately for Sam, before he could add to his permanent headache, he found his salvation.  Some long dead Men of Letters scholar had been working on translating the manuscript, and had even typed up ninety percent of his notes.

Sam speed-read the translation until he found a section that talked about a non-figurative way to capture a person’s likeness. Holy shit, this could be it. Sam couldn’t resist a shout of excitement that startled Pearl into dropping her paintbrush, splashing varnish over the library floor. Since Billie’s advice, they were taking it in turns to add an extra coat of varnish over the many coats of sealant oil they’d been lavishing on the exposed wood of the three ‘youngest’ panels, that is to say the ones containing Dean, Claire and Joel, and Marvin. All of which meant the bunker constantly reeked of varnish and white spirit. Even the strongest coffee had started tasting like turpentine, which left Sam’s stomach persistently queasy.

“All right, I’ll bite,” Pearl said, retrieving her brush. “What is it?”

Sam wanted to rein himself in when he saw how Pearl’s sharp features were softened by hope, but – fuck it. He felt the same. It felt good after months of grinding, tedious getting-nowhere. If he was right, this wasn’t going to be easy, or even painless, but if he could find the right artist, it could work. It could really work.

** 0x0x0x0 **

The right artist. Huh, easier said than done. This artist needed to be talented enough to reproduce the panel portraits down to the last detail, knowledgeable enough about fifteenth century oil painting to be able to mix their own paints, and unprincipled enough to accept Sam’s added ingredients, whatever their nature. Oh, and be willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement about the Bunker, because Sam couldn’t have someone casually talking about what they saw here.

“Why don’t you just advertise for an artist in residence?” Jody suggested while they were on one of their long phone calls. “People do that all the time,” she continued, while Sam was mentally torn between punching the air and kissing Jody. Luckily for Jody, she was many miles away and never knew what she’d missed.

Sam’s laptop was out and he was composing an advertisement before Jody hung up the call.

Sam and Pearl held the interviews in a diner, neutral ground. Strangely enough, it helped Sam focus, being surrounded by a bustling atmosphere redolent with coffee and bacon, familiar smells that spoke of Dean. Jody, now safely established in her position as sheriff of New Hope, took a few days personal time and drove over to help him and Pearl grill the candidates (Sam could almost hear Dean making the diner-related pun then laughing at his own cleverness).

The first two were a bust for different reasons. One wasn’t interested in _constraining their talent to such rigid parameters_ , which begged the question as to why he’d bothered applying in the first place. The second was just a kid, fresh faced and bursting with enthusiasm, and Sam just couldn’t bring himself to drag her into the solemn atmosphere that imbued the bunker these days. It would have been like pinning a butterfly to a board then stuffing it into a drawer in a museum store. 

The third applicant proved more promising, though on first glance Sam thought the guy must have walked into the wrong diner. In his expensive, well cut suit and shiny leather brogues he looked like he’d be more at home modelling for Gucci than getting his hands dirty painting. If anything, this one reminded Sam of Naomi’s angels, which was somewhat disturbing. Sam knew better than to judge by appearances, and he was pretty sure the guy was using a pseudonym, but it wasn’t until Matt Keller opened up his portfolio and showed them samples of his work that Sam began to think he might have found their artist. This guy had true talent.

He waited while Matt (if that was really his name) read through the contract Sam had drawn up before asking for a pen.

“So you just want the four paintings done to your specifications, and anything else I create while I’m resident is mine, right?”

“Yes. You’re fine with the clause about not leaving the bunker until those four works are done?”

Matt nodded. “Sure. The seclusion suits me right now.”

“Want to tell us why?” Pearl asked, one eyebrow raised. Her thin fingers tapped nervously on the vinyl table, and Sam saw Matt’s piercing blue gaze follow the motion, registering her bitten fingernails before landing on her face. He smiled, shaking his head. “Nope, not today,” he said but Pearl had already melted under the power of the smile. Sam frowned a little. This guy might be more charming than Dean on a good day. He hoped Pearl was up to the challenge.

Matt paused, pen poised to sign the contract. “I’m going to need supplies – walnut and linseed oil, white beeswax, mortar and pestle, a double boiler…I won’t know exactly which pigments I’ll need until I’ve examined the original paintings.”

“Whatever you need, Matt,” Sam said. “If we don’t already have it, we can order whatever materials you require. Some pigments will need special mixing, no questions asked. You okay with that too?”

“You’re the boss,” Matt said, turning the full force of that smile on Sam. Who found himself smiling back through face muscles that felt stiff with disuse. Maybe this could all work out after all.

 

** 0x0x0x0 **

 

The first sensation to hit Dean was pain. Which figured – story of his life after all. The second was a raging thirst so bad he felt he’d been desiccated, staked out in a desert for a few days and left to dry like a piece of meat. Third was his default setting – a wave of near panic. Where was Sam?

His eyes were open but his vision was blurred, he couldn’t get a fix on anything much more than a few shapes and colours moving around in front of his face. Which brought him to another unpleasant realisation. He couldn’t move, not even a muscle, not so much as a twitch. He thought there might be voices talking, but the sounds were muffled so he couldn’t make out any understandable words. So, yeah. He was awake, but completely helpless, and this fucking sucked.

Some time passed, Dean had no way of measuring it, other than the level of pain in his left leg and left arm seemed to be increasing, until it became his universe. It was so overwhelming, he could think of nothing else. It wasn’t until some time later Dean noticed he wasn’t breathing. Well, fuck. Was this the Empty? Was he dead?

More time slipped away, how much, how long? Pain and questions were all he was left with. The light was constant, no sunrise or sunset, no night or day. The external voices came and went but never grew more comprehensible – he had no idea if they were male or female, or even if they were human. His constant companions were hunger, thirst and pain, closely followed by loneliness and boredom. One thing to be said about Hell, he’d rarely been alone, and the inventiveness of the tortures Alastair had devised for him could be called a lot of things, but tedious wasn’t one of them. Who’d have thought anything could make him nostalgic for Hell?

Once he’d become aware again, there was no way back to an unconscious state and nowhere to hide. However bad the pain got, he remained awake and aware and if he’d been able to scream, he thought his throat would have been raw. Maybe he should be thankful he had no measure for time, no scope for the endless now. He wasn’t. Grateful that is. What he was? Fucking pissed, that’s what. He clung to the anger – it was his only shield against the weeping that threatened to well up and he knew once he started on that route he’d drown in his non-existent tears. Thankfully he wasn’t that big of a girl.

At some point he was distracted from the pain and tedium by something new. There was a kind of tugging. Something niggling at his edges, irritating as an itch you can’t scratch. It took a while for a swirl of colour to register over the whitewash of agony from his leg and arm, but once he noticed it, it seemed to gain strength from his attention. Something was happening something was…

Sensation flooded him. The smell of paint overlaid with something more familiar, metallic and terrifying – blood, his brain told him it was blood – and bitter herbs burning. All scents that spoke of danger on so many levels – not least of which was the belated realisation that to be able to smell meant he must be breathing again. Over and above the still incomprehensible murmuring of voices was the thudding, loud in his ears, of a heartbeat – his heartbeat. Another resurrection? Maybe, though it didn’t bear much resemblance to waking up in his coffin after Cas pulled him out of Hell; neither did it remind him of Crowley making him into a demon. This was both a more gradual and more pain-filled experience.

His vision cleared, colours and shapes sharpening into focus and showing him the most important thing in his universe – the sharp, anxious features of Sam’s face. Pain was a constant, grounding him even though every exposed inch of his skin was being flayed – exaggeration? Probably…he hoped.

There was a swooping moment of disorientation where he seemed to be in two – no, three – places at once, then he was snagged on a thread, a tangle of them, that trapped him and stopped him from going…somewhere. He didn’t know where but he assumed it wouldn’t have been anywhere good, if the relieved expression on Sam’s face was anything to go by.

He was in the middle of the bunker library, without the faintest idea how he’d gotten there. The last thing he remembered was being in that weird room in some woman’s house, standing in front of the same painted panel that was now propped up against a chair right in front of him. 

Any further speculation was curtailed when his left leg protested vehemently at having weight on it, and he lurched to one side, listing like a drunken sailor in a storm. Sam caught him before he toppled overboard – and that was enough of that analogy, thanks very much. Dean didn’t even like boats.

“F-fuck, Sammy,” Dean’s words stuttered, his mouth so stiff, it was almost as if he was made of wood. “Think m’leg’s broken.” Sam was practically carrying him, and that wasn’t how things should go. Dean wasn’t that much of a girl that he’d allow his little brother do all the work, injured or not. So he did his best to stay upright, to share some of the burden, but the creeping blackness at the edges of his vision told him to forget anything so ambitious right now. The last thing he heard before passing out was Sam whispering apologies into his ear. Fuckin’ kid was always blaming himself for something.

And on that thought, Dean slid under without so much as a ripple.

** 0x0x0x0 **

When Dean surfaced again, it was to a more familiar feeling – a lazy swimming in the balmy Gulf Stream that signified morphine. The air was too warm, unmistakeably clinical, with overtones of fresh sweaty Sam, and Dean wanted to sink back down again, enjoy wallowing in drug-induced contentment. Of course, he didn’t. He was constitutionally incapable of wallowing when he knew Sam would be worrying – and besides, the sharp needle of curiosity was pricking him. With an effort, he opened his eyes.

Sure enough, a cocoon of pasty hospital green greeted him, along with with the altogether more reassuring sight of his gigantic brother folded uncomfortably into one of those uncomfortable plastic-covered chairs that only seem to appear at hospital bedsides. Dean was rather miffed to find that the rhythmic rumbling interrupted by random snuffling he’d thought to be a malfunctioning air-con unit was in fact Sam, who was demonstrating his lack of worry about Dean by sleeping through Dean’s awakening. Typical.

Which left Dean none the wiser as to how he’d ended up in hospital for the umpteenth time in his career. He tried to backtrack but got no further than a jumbled up mess of memories about the bunker, some dumbass ancient paintings and a thin blonde chick before he came up against a fetid dark pool of introspection that had him backpedalling faster than you could say Christo to a demon. All the pleasant warmth the morphine had induced was dispelled, and Dean couldn’t help shuddering. He’d recognised it as a place he didn’t want to go back to, and he had a horrible feeling he’d already spent more time there than he cared to remember.  

Now wide awake, and feeling as if someone had upended a bucket of icy water over his head, Dean looked around for distractions and discovered a) it wasn’t just his leg that was broken but his left arm as well, and b) Sam hadn’t come unscathed through whatever it was that had happened to them. Dean’s attention honed in on the latter, a well worn route that he was comfortable following. Now his vision was clear, Dean could see how worn and tired Sam looked, his glasses askew on his pointy nose. Dean’s heart lurched when he took in the way Sam was cradling his left hand to his chest, focussing on Sam’s bandaged pinky finger, then running his gaze over the rest of Sam’s body, looking for other signs of damage. He relaxed a little when he came up with nothing else, only Winchester wear and tear, and the creeping cracks and lines of aging – which were bad enough. Dean hated to see his little brother growing old, just as he’d hated to see little Sammy’s innocence wiped away by monsters all those years ago. Fuck inevitability; Dean still wished he could fight it.

After trying and failing to sit up, Dean decided that fighting of any kind was probably going to have to wait a few hours, maybe a few days. The effort left him dizzy and sweating, and the quiet whimper he gave out woke Sam, which was embarrassing.

“Hey,” Sam said, leaning forward and putting one large hand on Dean’s good arm. Fuck if it didn’t feel like a ton weight and what the hell was wrong with him? Surely this weakness was more than the good drugs and a couple of broken bones.

“W’h’p’n?” was the best Dean could manage, but after forty-odd years, luckily Sam was fluent in Dean-speak. Typical Sam, he replied to Dean’s question with one of his own.

“What do you remember?”

Good question. What _did_ Dean remember? Or rather, what did he remember that he was willing to share? He took advantage of the few moments sipping at the water Sam gave him to gather his thoughts. It was lukewarm and tasted like plastic but it was glorious. 

“Dean?”

Dean jolted out of the blissful rehydrating haze he’d fallen into, then winced when the movement jarred his broken bones. Strangest fucking injuries he’d ever had, and that was saying something.

“Sorry, m’ so thirsty, Sammy,” he croaked, realising it was true. He was as parched as Nevada, and hungry too. He looked at his hand where he was still clutching the now empty cup, and did a double take. He put the cup down carefully, holding his hand up in front of his face. Apart from feeling like his limb weighed a ton, he was part horrified, part fascinated to see how all the tendons stood out over the bones, the muscle and flesh wasted away. Great. He’d come back from wherever he’d been looking like a freaking skeleton. As if it wasn’t bad enough that his head was filled to bursting with every single crappy decision he’d ever made, every wrong action he’d ever taken and every bad word he’d ever spoken. He didn’t notice his hand had started shaking until Sam’s giant mitt wrapped round his fingers and gently lowered his hand onto his stomach.

“Dean,” Sam repeated, but this time there was no interrogation in his tone, only concern, and it was all too much.  A trembling spread like contagion through his whole body, and before he knew what was happening, tears were streaming down his face and he couldn’t breathe. He wanted to run away, he wanted to sink through the bed and disappear, he wanted…

Then Sam was climbing onto the damn bed, all tangled up with Dean’s IVs and just smothered him. Those ridiculously long arms wrapped around Dean until all the wanting was squeezed out of him and the shaking finally stopped. For a long time, Sam didn’t let go, and Dean didn’t move, and they sat listening to each other’s breathing, as if they both understood that words were unnecessary encumbrances after all these years. Too easily misunderstood, too revealing, too concealing, too inadequate. 

** 0x0x0x0 **

 

Pearl and Jody were in the bunker, waiting, when Sam brought Dean home – as usual discharged AMA. Using crutches was hard with one arm in plaster as well as the leg, so Dean had to lean on Sam in order to negotiate the bunker stairs – in fact, Sam was practically carrying him, though Dean would never admit it. Dean didn’t want to think about what the look of shock on Jody’s face meant about the state of his body; he’d managed to avoid mirrors since he’d woken up. Apparently Sam had shaved a substantial beard off for him while he’d been playing Mr Comatose in the hospital. Turned out he’d only been there long enough to get his leg and arm set and a bunch of IV nutrients shoved into his veins to counteract what appeared to be several weeks’ worth of starvation. As Sam had pointed out, he was lucky that the whole time he’d spent as a wall painting hadn’t counted or he’d have been a desiccated corpse by now. Which was why Dean had insisted on getting back to the bunker as quick as possible, because he was only too aware Claire had been trapped for several months longer than him and Joel.

Once Dean was settled with his leg propped up on a chair, white faced and breathing heavily, and longing for his morphine drip, Pearl presented her idea of using a tooth for the bone part of the recipe, as a less drastic alternative to Sam’s self-mutilation. That was when Dean found out that Sam had chopped off the first joint of his left pinky finger to provide both the blood and bone part of the spell. Dean ranted for several minutes over this, and Sam allowed him to let off steam, but they both knew each of them would cut off entire limbs to save each other. From the expressions on their faces, everyone there knew Dean’s bluster came from very weak ground, but indulged him anyway. Dean didn’t let on, but he appreciated the courtesy.

Especially when he discovered that the two girls had been waiting on him and Sam before trying the ritual again to free Claire and little Joel. Which, after finding out that this whole deal was kind of time critical, was perhaps a courtesy too far.

“Are you crazy? Why’d you wait?”

“We needed to be sure there were no side effects,” Sam said with a shrug, and Dean paled a bit further, thinking what that could have meant. The side effects of his physical revival after his panel had cracked were bad enough. There was no way he was going to talk about the horror of having spent however long it was contemplating his navel. It hadn’t helped to find that contemplation was the intended purpose of this emblematic painting phase people had gone through in the sixteenth century. Dean always said history sucked.

He hadn’t survived to the ripe old age of forty-five by wallowing in introspection, that was Sam’s thing, not his. Which raised a new thought.

“Hey! Did I miss a birthday while I was trapped in there? Does that mean I’m a year younger than I was?” Dean thought that was a reasonable question. He didn’t think it warranted a clip round the back of the head from Sam. Besides, doling out smacks to the head was his job. Damn kid was getting far too cocky. Clearly Dean had been away too long. Trouble was, he wasn’t entirely all there now, thanks to his injuries.

The next two, maybe three days, Dean wasn’t sure, went by in a Vicodin-induced haze. At some point Alex turned up, which meant Sam had to mediate between Jody and Alex over whose frigging tooth should get extracted in order to bring Claire back. The two women were agreed that they would both be donating blood. In the meantime, Sam was running round gathering all the ingredients for two sets of rituals, and looking after Dean’s useless invalid ass because he was too fucking crippled to even make it to the bathroom by himself. Which for some obscure reason Sam seemed to think was Sam’s fault. Now Sam wanted him to go lie down while they performed the ritual for Joel.

“No fuck—frigging way. I’m staying here,” Dean asserted, belatedly modifying his language for Alex’s sake. He set aside the two Vicodin Sam just handed him; he wanted to be awake for this. He’d have folded his arms but the plaster on his left one rather hampered that gesture, so he settled for giving Sam his best stubborn look instead. Sam gave him a hard stare then nodded. Okay then.

By the time Sam started up the first of the rituals, Dean’s leg and arm were throbbing in time to every beat of his heart, but he felt truly present for the first time in an age. Despite that, even though his focus was laser sharp, he still couldn’t have said exactly how Joel materialised into his own physical form, though he was pretty sure he saw the little boy’s soul glowing as it was syphoned out of the painting and got caught in the net made of Pearl’s hair strung up between the original sorcerous panel and Sam’s new one. 

Huh, so that’s how it was done. Damn, but his little brother was just as sharp as he was when he went to Stanford all those years ago, and Dean couldn’t help the swell of pride in his chest at that knowledge.

Sam didn’t take much time to rest up or savour Pearl’s joy at being reunited with her son before going through the same motions to bring back Claire. This time the net was woven of Jody and Alex’s hair, and they’d finally compromised on using Jody’s tooth and Alex’s blood. This was the one Sam was most concerned about, as he wasn’t sure that love would be enough.  
“Family,” Dean said with the voice of authority when Sam raised his fears, “don’t end with blood.” Dean never doubted it, and he was proved right when Claire materialised, a pale imitation of her normal vibrant, aggressive self. Claire was in a pitiful state, the worst of the three, having been trapped the longest. She was scooped up into a tearful embrace by Jody and Alex, and escorted by Sam to the bedroom already set up with IVs to ensure her survival. Jody had agreed taking the two of them to hospital in Lebanon would likely raise too many suspicions after Dean’s admission – the admission of three people all suffering from severe malnutrition and dehydration would demand better explanations than they had right now.

Pearl on the other hand couldn’t take any chances with her child. Dean understood that completely, but when he tried to help, Sam brushed him off. Seemed little bro’ had it all in hand. Sam disappeared with Pearl and the kid, presumably taking them to Lebanon’s hospital, which left Dean sitting on his newly bony ass for a couple of hours that felt like much, much longer, especially when Dean couldn’t even haul his sorry ass to the fridge to grab a beer – or better still a fifth of whiskey to dull this fucking pain. He glared at the crutches propped against the mahogany table. The fuckers were mocking his inability to use them. Last time he’d tried he’d ended up in a compromising position, ass up over the table, having managed one stride before face planting. In spite of that, he was still tempted to have another go.

After less than an hour, Dean was regretting his decision to come off the Vicodin, and that the chair he was sitting on was out of reach of the two tablets he’d put aside that morning. He _really_ regretted not having asked Sam to settle him down in his own room before leaving the bunker. At least there he could have watched some porn on his laptop. Stuck in the library, he had nothing to distract him from worrying about Claire, apart from his attempts not to gag at the cloying smell leftover from the soul-summoning ritual, and stare blindly at the dusty tomes Sam had piled up on the table. Typically, all he had to do was stretch out a hand to reach _those_. Maybe he’d get desperate enough in a minute; at least he could use that fat leather-bound book on top of the pile to bludgeon himself into unconsciousness.

“Still wallowing in self pity, I see,” came a female voice from behind him, making Dean startle into half standing, forgetting his broken leg, before the pain kicked in and knocked him back into his chair, gasping. 

“Fuck, Billie,” Dean said as the reaper walked round the table, trailing a dusky finger along its surface as if testing for dust. “I thought reapers were just collectors not the ones doing the killing. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

Billie turned those dark, fathomless eyes onto Dean and he suppressed a shudder. 

“Don’t worry, Dean, I’m not going to reap someone who isn’t dead yet, however much they deserve it.”

Dean opened his mouth to make some sort of joke, but Billie forestalled him. She gestured to the painted panels, still leaning against the library walls.  “I’m here for them.”

Dean stared at the panels, at all the beautifully detailed miniatures that populated each painting. There was a woman in Puritan dress standing by a well; a child, no more than four years old, sitting in the doorway of a bell tower; a man in a top hat like Abe Lincoln used to wear; another man with grey hair holding a rapier. Time moved more slowly in the painting, but not slow enough to save them all.  So many people, all trapped there for centuries with no sustenance for their transformed bodies. 

Dean understood, only too well.

“Their souls,” he said. “You want their souls.”

Billie had moved and was standing next to the panel Marvin Leigh was painted into, her expression unreadable. 

“That one there,” Dean said, pointing to Marvin. “Can he be saved? Like me, like the other two?”

She passed a hand over the painting and shook her head. Dean took a deep breath.

“Okay then. How do we set their souls free?”

“Burn them.”

Dean chewed his bottom lip. “They won’t feel it, right?”

Billie’s dark gaze pinned him in place more effectively than his broken limbs, but this time, there was compassion in her eyes. 

“They might. But their bodies are wasted away or dead, and their souls will be trapped there forever if you don’t free them. A little pain is worth the risk, don’t you think?”

Dean thought about how much pain and how much risk he and Sam had faced over the years, and gritted his teeth.

“Help me with those crutches, will you?”

** 0x0x0x0 **

 

It was nearly dark when Sam pulled up outside the bunker, but he was just in time to glimpse someone who wasn’t Dean carrying a long, oblong object wrapped in hessian across the path from the bunker’s garage entrance. Whoever it was didn’t look around or acknowledge Sam’s presence before disappearing into the bushes. Sam put the Impala into park and climbed out as quickly as he could. Finding a gap in the undergrowth, Sam followed the path the stranger had made until he came to a small clearing.

Dean was standing with his back to the path, awkwardly balanced on his crutches. Even in the half light of dusk, Sam could see from the tension in Dean’s shoulders the amount of pain he was in, but there was nothing but determination showing in the line of Dean’s profile. The person Sam had followed was laying their burden down on a haphazard heap of similar shaped objects piled up at the centre of the glade. Now she was in the open, Sam could see that it was a woman, but even when she stood up and moved out of the shadows, it took Sam a moment to recognise her. When he did, fear was a chilly wind on the back of his neck. He forced one foot forward, then the other, until he was standing next to Dean, locking gazes with Billie the Reaper over the top of the pile of wooden boards that he belatedly realised were the panels from Lady Drury’s closet. 

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean said, gently bumping Sam’s shoulder as if he knew what Sam was feeling, suddenly encountering Billie again. Which, after so many years together, he probably did. Billie turned her dark gaze onto the heap of wood, which was a blessing. Sam didn’t want that laser focus on him now, or ever, come to that.

Billie bent down and grabbed something from a wicker basket at her feet. She stepped forward and threw whatever it was onto the panels, and Sam caught a whiff of something bitter and herbal.

“Make yourself useful, Big W,” Billie said, and Sam realised with a shock that she meant him. Dean grinned at Sam’s discomfort, the douche, before he elaborated. “Pour the oil from that flask onto the pyre and let’s light this bitch up.”

Oh. Right. Sam might be physically slower than he used to be, but he was still quick enough on the uptake. He understood now. Billie was here for the souls.

The oil coated his fingers as Sam unstoppered the flask. It smelled like Catholicism. Sam wondered if it was Holy Oil, though the fragrance was sharper than he remembered. He sprinkled it liberally over the painted panels. The oil glistened as it ran down the painted faces of the imprisoned people, traced the contours of strange twisted trees and fantastical creatures. He pulled a lighter out of his jacket pocket and touched the pale orange flame to the edge of the nearest panel. The fire kindled quickly, its flames flaring high, as if fuelled by gas jets. Sam jumped backwards with an alacrity he hadn’t thought he was capable of achieving, narrowly avoiding being scorched.

The old, dry wood crackled and popped like campfires when he was a kid, and Sam was momentarily filled with a longing for Smores and burnt coffee. That inappropriate craving was dispersed like smoke when the first of the many souls rose up from the heart of the fire. A glowing thread of white light, the soul snaked out of the flames, tentative and fragile as gossamer. Another thread joined it, then another. Soon the bright white of the many souls outshone the warmer reds and oranges of the fire, as the strands twisted and wove together in a strange and beautiful interlace of light, hovering above their heads.

Billie stepped forward, arms raised, and the whole mass of souls swirled into a tornado-like column centred on the curvaceous Reaper. Sam felt Dean’s shoulder tremble, and almost unconsciously, he slid his arm round his brother. His excuse may have been that he was propping Dean up, making himself a human crutch, but really, Sam was holding on because that was what Sam did. He held onto his brother because Dean was all he had left. The fire was burning low, its fuel nearly consumed, and the clearing was quiet except for the sound of his and Dean’s breathing, and the rustle of the cool breeze stirred up by the passing of the souls.

The soul-light brightened into a magnesium-bright flare that burned through Sam’s eyelids even after he’d squeezed them tight shut. When he risked opening his eyes again, Billie was still there, her long dark curls unruffled in the afterglow of so many long-awaited deaths. Sam felt Dean shudder a little as Billie turned her attention on them, and involuntarily tightened his grip on his brother. It was a measure of Dean’s fear and respect for Billie that any protest about _not being a girl_ was suppressed for the moment, though Sam was sure Dean’s customary bravado would be back in place once the Reaper left them alone.

There was an expression on Billie’s face that Sam didn’t recognise until she spoke, and then he realised. It was compassion.

“Winchesters,” she said, and for the first time, their name didn’t sound like censure, coming from her lips. “You did a good thing – a right thing – today. I won’t forget it.”

She glowed briefly with a pale light like moonlight, then she was gone, leaving Sam and Dean in a darkness lit only by the faint red embers of the dying bonfire.

“D’you think we won some brownie points there, Sammy?” Dean said, after a moment’s silence. He didn’t pull out of Sam’s embrace, and Sam didn’t think about letting go, liking the feel of Dean’s warmth pressed against his side. Sam tilted his head a little towards his brother, breathing in the scent of wood smoke and incense that had gathered in Dean’s hair.

“I don’t know, Dean,” he replied. “Heaven, Hell or the Empty, it doesn’t matter as long as we are together in the end, right?”

Dean grunted, probably aiming for non-committal, but Sam could feel him smiling, and that was enough.

[](http://s830.photobucket.com/user/Amberdreams1960/media/ldc-5-v3-5.gif.html)

Beautiful gif by entirely-the-wrong-sort

**Author's Note:**

> Lady Drury's Closet is real - it resides in Christchurch Mansion in the town of Ipswich in Suffolk, UK. There's no hint of it being haunted though, which is a shame.  
> You can read about it and see photos here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Drury%27s_Closet


End file.
